“When it comes to music, I very often go with my gut.

Music stirs a lot of emotion in me. It can draw me closer by raising my spirits and it can repel me by bringing me down. I like to get a feel for a performer by sorting through their life story and experiencing first-hand how a roomful of people responds to their songs.

I bring all of this up because I was recently alerted to a musician from Saugerties that I knew nothing about. Her name is Laura Stevenson, she has lived in Saugerties for nearly two years and I really liked her response when I asked what she likes about where she lives.”

A robust schedule of events has been released for October’s month-long Shout Out Saugerties festival, which aims to showcase local artistic talent and bring culture and creative activities to the community.

Founded by a volunteer group of artists, humanists and community-minded townspeople in 2017, with the intent of creating a locally based substitute for the cultural services then being cut back from the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the ShoutOut Saugerties Fall Festival returns once more, with diverse programming scheduled for September 28 through October 27.

Katie Cokinos, a Saugerties filmmaker who traditionally dabbles in fiction, has won the Susana Meyer Award, named for one of the original founders of the Shout Out Saugerties Festival who passed away last year.

Members of the exploratory committee, also included Anna Landewe, Opus 40 owner and creator Tad Richards, Shout Out Saugerties champion Suzanne Bennett and Robert Langdon of the Emerge Gallery on Main Street.

“Stories create not just our perceived reality, but reality itself,” Maureen Cummins told me. It was an apropos moment to be pondering the power of stories—October 2018, campaign-for-life-or-death-of-democracy time in America. Cummins, best known for her visual art, was in the midst of a performance piece of sorts.

Shout Out Saugerties returns this month with plenty of creative experiences featuring arts and cultural events.

Led by a dedicated team of volunteers, this is the second year the Village of Saugerties becomes an ecosystem of workshops, discussions and programs featuring music, literary readings, visual art, crafts, film, culinary arts and performance.

When we think of a writer at work, we think of a solitary engagement with pen, or  typewriter, or computer keyboard, conducted in a private place, devoid, if possible, of ambient noise and external distractions. But starting on Wednesday morning, October 10, Maureen Cummins will be engaged in writing a work of nonfiction in full public view, seated in the window of Pig Bar & Grill on Partition Street in Saugerties. 

What do you do if you’re a performance artist, and you pass your local church and hear words in your head telling you to say all the Psalms in that church? Linda Mary Montano responded to this prompt by creating a performance outside the Vortex Theater in Austin, Texas, where she dressed as Saint Teresa and stood on a 14-foot lift to sing the Psalms seven hours a day for three days.